Dear Coleen

My girlfriend dropped a bombshell on me last week by revealing she is two months pregnant. She insists I’m the only man she’s slept with in that time but I had a vasectomy so surely the baby can’t be mine, can it?

I’m 37 and my girlfriend is 31 and we’ve been going out together for two years now. When I was 21, I got the snip impulsively. All my family said I’d live to regret it as I got older but, 16 years later, I still don’t.

Fatherhood does not appeal to me at all. In fact, I can’t stand kids. My brother has three and they do his head in. They whinge and moan all the time and drain him emotionally and financially. He’s constantly exhausted as well.

To be honest, I’m also quite a selfish person. Deep down I’d never be able to put a child’s best interests ahead of my own, so I’d be a rubbish dad.

A few months into our relationship, my girlfriend told me she wanted children one day but when I told her I’d had a vasectomy, I could tell she was disappointed, although she didn’t say it.

We do have unprotected sex regularly and were doing it around the time of conception, which was the Christmas period. She’s adamant the baby is mine but I’m struggling to believe her.

She was going out quite a lot during this time so it is possible she could have been with someone else.

I’ve Googled vasectomy and it says it’s 99% effective in terms of preventing pregnancy, so there is the tiniest chance this one could’ve slipped through the net.

But I’m just not convinced by her story. We’ve fallen out massively and I can tell I’ve upset her quite badly. I really don’t know what to do or what to believe.

Coleen says

It’s not an impossibility and you do hear stories about couples it’s happened to. I can understand why you’re suspicious though, as the chances are clearly slim. However, I think the real issue here is that you absolutely do not want children in your life – your own or anyone else’s.

There’s probably a part of you hoping that the baby is someone else’s because then you will have an excuse to say you don’t want anything to do with it.

You’ve been brutally honest and I respect you for admitting that you’re too selfish to have kids. That’s fine – plenty of people don’t want to have a family. But your girlfriend is pregnant now, so you have to deal with it.

If you love her and want to stay with her, a baby is now going to be part of the package whether you like it or not. Obviously, you can talk to your doctor about the vasectomy and your concerns. And when the baby is born, you can do a DNA test to find out whether the child is yours.

If it is, you might find you get on board and fall in love with your baby or you may be even more against the idea of fatherhood.

What you have to focus on is whether you can commit to that life or not – if you can’t and the child is yours, do the right thing and provide financial support if nothing else.